Chapter 26
Who and what I am
LORIEN
Jude’s calmed. He’s come back to me as his center and he’s steadier for it. There’s a peace in the way he breathes, his chest rising and falling against mine, the weight of him anchoring me just as much as I do him.
For a moment, I let myself exist in this. In the stillness of it. The quiet before the storm I know is coming. But then he shifts, lifts his head to look at me, and I see the question forming before he even speaks
I’ve tried to hold back this moment for days now, playing with him instead of deepening the conversation whenever we got this close, and now, he won’t be denied.
“You need to tell me what’s going on,” he says, his voice softer than before but no less insistent. “No more half-truths. No more keeping me in the dark.”
I exhale slowly, dragging my fingers through his hair, buying myself seconds I know won’t change a damn thing. “Jude—”
“No.” He pushes up onto his elbows, his eyes locked on mine, dark and determined. “I can’t trust you if you don’t trust me. You said you trust me. Prove it.”
I sit up too, the warmth of his body slipping from mine. I miss it instantly.
“It’s not about trust.”
His laugh is sharp, humorless. “Isn’t it?”
I clench my jaw, looking away. The room feels smaller suddenly, its walls pressing in, the water beyond them calling to something ancient in me. It’s restless and it’s a fury I don’t want unleashed.
“Some things are better left buried.”
Jude shakes his head. “I don’t believe that. And you don’t either.”
I meet his gaze, the shadows of my past settling between us.
Jude doesn’t blink. He doesn’t look away, doesn’t flinch under the pressure of what he’s asking. I could tell him to drop it. I could command him if I had to, but I already know he won’t obey me. He’s as relentless as the tide and, gods help me, I want to be pulled under.
But some truths drown.
I run a hand over my jaw, exhaling slowly.
My thoughts shift like uncertain currents, a tangle of past and present, dragging me in different directions.
I’ve spent decades locking these memories away, burying them beneath duty and necessity.
I’m not even sure I know what good unearthing them will do.
And yet, I know that’s a lie, even before I finish the thought.
Jude.
He isn’t just demanding knowledge. He’s demanding my trust. My honesty. And it terrifies me how much I want to give it.
My fingers tighten against the sheets before I force myself to relax.
“It starts with Helena and the kelpies,” I say at last.
Jude stills, his body wound with tension, but he doesn’t interrupt.
I shift, resting my arms on my knees, staring at the far wall instead of at him. “There was a war. Not the kind you read about in history books. Not the kind that ends.” I drag a hand through my hair. “The mer and the kelpies have always been at odds, but this was worse. This was annihilation.”
Jude’s breath hitches, barely audible. “What happened?”
I shake my head. “We tried to do what we always do. Maintain balance. Keep order. But we underestimated them. They weren’t just taking territory; they were undoing the waterways themselves.
Turning our own seas into traps, our own rivers into dead veins.
” My throat works around the words. “It was nearly the end of everything.”
A flicker of worry flashes over his face, and I don’t like it.
Yet I know I have to continue, and I know he will hurt again at the end of this conversation. No matter what I do, I will hurt him, because this truth is cruel.
I inhale slowly, the memory pressing in like the weight of the deep. “It didn’t stop. Not really.” My fingers curl against my knees. “We found a way to force them back. A way to make them retreat. But wars like this don’t end, Jude. They just go dormant, waiting for the next storm.”
His eyes search mine, sharp, assessing. “You said Helena and the kelpies. What does she have to do with this?”
I let out a breath, slow and measured, but it does nothing to ease the tightness in my chest. “Everything.”
Jude shifts, his hand bracing on the bed, his body angled to mine.
He’s listening, not just to the words but to what I’m saying, and that’s what unsettles me most. Right now, I’d give up everything I have, all the gold and jewels in my vaults and all the paintings and statues that adorn my palace to spare him this.
But some bargains cannot be struck.
“Your aunt made a deal. One that should not have been made. One that cost her everything.”
Jude’s expression darkens. “The one with you?”
I shake my head. “No, baby. She made a deal with the kelpies. To stop the war. To save what remained. She thought she could control them, that she could twist the terms in our favor. She was wrong.”
Jude exhales sharply. “She lost.”
“Not exactly.” I press my fingers against my temples, forcing the memories back into their place.
“The bargain she made gave her power, Jude. The kelpies’ power.
She added their magic to her own, and then they overpowered her.
She was an unstoppable force, a rage that had no limits and could not be contained.
Your aunt became the weapon that would destroy the world, and the kelpies showed no restraint, unleashing her on us with a fury we could not contain. ”
Jude stares at me and the color drains from his face.
He has so little of it, but now he’s pale as sea foam, the blood leached from his skin as if the ocean itself has tried to reclaim him.
His lips part, but no sound comes out, as a war behind his eyes unfolds, disbelief battling with the sickening weight of truth.
“But you found a way,” he mumbles.
“We fought at the temple of Helena,” I say, the words tasting of salt and blood. “And she almost killed me.”
I can still feel the crushing pressure of the water, the weight of her rage, thick as the undertow dragging me down. She moved like something unhinged from time, unbound by reason, a force of fury and sorrow so consuming that for a moment, I thought it might be better to let her take me.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Jude watches me, his breathing uneven. I know he’s seeing it too, imagining the fight, Helena’s wrath, my desperation.
“In the end, I held her life in my hands,” I continue, my fingers curling as if I can still feel the phantom shape of her throat beneath them. “And she struck a deal with me that saved hers.”
Jude swallows hard. “The deal that involves me?”
Tides, I wish there was a way to spare him from this.
A way that did not shatter his heart or crush his soul, but there is no escape from this.
Not for either of us, and I only wish that there had been more time.
There’s never enough of it, and now these last few seconds are more valuable than any I’ve ever held.
“She was bound to me.” The words scrape my throat like salt over raw wounds. “The kelpies had overpowered her, used her as their weapon. She couldn’t break free, not on her own. So she swore herself to me, and with that bond, I was able to sever their hold on her.”
Jude shakes his head, confused. “But she still had their magic.”
“Yes.” I exhale slowly. “And she was meant to return it to me when she died.”
A pause.
The silence stretches, tightens.
And then understanding dawns, creeping over Jude’s face like the slow pull of a riptide.
His breath shudders. “She didn’t.”
“No.”
Jude’s hands clench into fists. “Where is it, then? Where did it go?”
I hold his gaze, steady and unflinching.
His eyes widen.
Their blue darkens.
And his soul screams in pain.
The room is too damn small. The air has turned heavy, thick with unseen things as the weight of unspoken truths presses down on us.
The water beyond the stone walls hums, not gently this time but restless, insistent.
A pulse that matches the pounding of my blood, the slow, inexorable rise of a future neither of us can stop.
Jude’s shaking his head before I even say the words.
His chest rises, then falls, each breath more uneven than the last. “No.”
“Yes.”
“She wouldn’t—”
“She did.”
The breath he takes is ragged. “You’re saying I don’t just have her magic?” He swallows. “I have theirs.”
I nod.
Jude lurches to his feet. He drags both hands through his hair, fingers tangling at the nape of his neck.
His panic is thick as the salt in the air, sharp as the bite of the wind howling above the waves.
His body thrums with it, with the knowledge that everything he thought he knew about himself is a lie.
He starts pacing, one hand braced on his hip, the other raking through his hair again and again as if he could dig into his own skull and pull the truth free.
“That’s why they came for me, isn’t it? They want their magic back, and…that’s why you wanted me too…” His breath shudders. “You wanted to take this for yourself. To use me as they used my aunt.”
“No.”
He stops dead, turning to face me.
His eyes are wild, brimming with something between fury and devastation. “Don’t fucking lie to me.”
I hold his gaze.
“I admit in the beginning, it was why I wanted you.” I force the words past my lips, though they taste of old regret, of things I cannot undo. “I thought I could break you, take that magic for myself, and if I could not, then I would find a way to contain you.”
He flinches. His hands curl into fists at his sides, his breath coming fast, uneven.
I step toward him, slow, careful. “That possibility died with our first kiss, Jude.”
He goes still.
I press forward, bridging the space between us until I’m close enough to feel the warmth of him, to see the storm in his eyes with nothing between us. And I pray he sees the gale blowing through me and understands that I am not deceiving him now.
“I am yours.” My voice is quiet, but the weight of the words settles between us like a tether, invisible but unbreakable. “And I do not want you for the magic you contain.”
His throat works as he swallows. “Then why?”